Dfuse

Try It Again Toolkit

The toolkit was developed from Dfuse’s experience with organisations working with young people leaving care and within youth justice settings. It is centred around two short films of young people in conflict, but each have two endings – one where the situation escalates and one where the situation is defused. The films were made entirely by young people from Fully Focused.

The two sessions combine the films with discussions and other activities from the Try it Again Toolkit to help young people to:

Identify behaviours which can escalate and de-escalate conflict situations,

Recognise how their emotions can affect their behaviour,

Learn ways to defuse conflict and give themselves a better chance of getting the outcome they want (or at least avoiding a bad outcome).

The workshops can be delivered in a school, youth justice settings, youth work sessions or within alternative provision. Notes on adapting the sessions for one-to-one conversations are also included. Each session includes:

A film, each with two endings,

Activities to explore the issues and skills raised in the films,

Discussion threads,

Worksheets to help young people who might struggle in discussions,

Background notes explaining the film,

A session outline.

By using this Toolkit in informal settings yourself you can deliver conflict defusing training whenever and wherever you want. This means that you don’t have to organise a special session with an external trainer – which is useful as it can often be difficult to get a group of young people with chaotic lifestyles to turn up at the same time. Also, workers told Dfuse that they wanted to be able to explore conflict with young people after incidents arose, when the impact of not managing conflict effectively is still fresh in the young people’s minds.

Download the toolkit by clicking the image below. View the films and play them full screen when delivering your workshops (internet connection needed), or click the links to download the films to your computer for use offline.